This one’s for Ralph

Sure, it’s bad form to brag about awards, but I’m making an exception because it gives me a chance to tell you a bit about my late father, Ralph Moore. I was fortunate to receive three first-place nods at last week’s Denver Press Club/Denver Newspaper Guild awards, and, in a case of small-world kismet, there were some very direct connections to my father.

Wendy Ishii in Bas Bleu’s award-winning production of “Wings.” Photo by William A. Cotton.

The best commentary or analysis entry was for a review of Bas Bleu Theatre Company’s “Wings.” The play takes you inside the mind of a stroke victim, and I dedicated part of that review to talking about the seven weeks between my own father’s debilitating stroke and his death.

The play in many ways helped me to understand what might have been going on in Ralph’s head during that time when he could not speak.

I believe that, like any audience member, critics do bring their baggage and personal experience into any play or musical he or she sees. To not admit that would be disingenuous. So while, no, I don’t believe any review should be more about the critic than the play, I also think not to reveal to readers what has informed your response to that particular piece of art would also be somewhat dishonest. I remember after my mom died, three of the next four plays I saw had mothers dying on stage. How can you not be affected by that?

Anyway, the cool thing about these being the Denver Press Club Awards is that my father also happened to be a 45-year member of that organization, and has been inducted into its Hall of Fame. He was a career sports writer at The Denver Post. And because these awards are judged by an out-state press club (meaning they could not have known or cared about the connection), I thought, how great that here was this review that was largely informed by my father, being singled out by a group that meant so much to him.

I thought that was pretty sweet. That’s all.

And let me take this opportunity to say thanks again to all those people out there with stories to tell, who trust people like me to tell them. It’s the only way compelling stories get written. So I also owe a debt to former Beirut hostages Tom Sutherland and Terry Anderson, as well as the parents of murdered American activist Rachel Corrie, because they are the only reason I got the other two nods:

Arts and entertainment news story: “Staging a Protest/Rachel’s Global Conscience” On the eve of the Denver opening of a play about Rachel Corrie, her parents contend they have been treated differently because her daughter fought for Palestinian human rights – and in this country, that’s fighting for the wrong team.

Arts and entertainment feature or profile: “Humanity held hostage”: As fellow Beirut hostages Tom Sutherland and Terry Anderson sat bound to a wall in near-total darkness year after endless year, they discovered their captors could chain their bodies, but they could not chain their minds.

Film & theater critic Lisa Kennedy likes to watch -- a lot. She also has a fondness for no-man’s lands, contested territories and Venn Diagrams. She believes the best place to live is usually on the border between two vibrant neighborhoods. Where better to apply this penchant for overlap and divergence than covering film and theater – two arts that owe so much to each other yet offer radically idiosyncratic pleasures? In another life, Kennedy was an Obie judge. In this one, she’s been a Pulitzer Prize judge in criticism, an Independent Spirit Award jurist and Colorado’s first member of the National Society of Film Critics.

More than a mash-up of the Running Lines and Diary of a Madmoviergoer blogs, Stage, Screen & In Between offers engaged takes on Colorado theater and film and pointed views on news from both coasts and both industries. Culture lovers, add your voices. Culture-makers, share your production journal entries and photos.